ART – the vital expression of the self.

It is through art that we hold onto our memories, remain present, and build our future. Art stands as a witness to life’s truths—a bridge between us, our internal and external world.

“You will never be able to experience everything.
So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.”
-Albert Camus

Hello, dear readers,

I’ve been turning inward to ground myself and to continue making art, doing poetic justice for my soul. I’ve missed writing here and can’t wait to return to my routine and share more with you. For now, I leave you with some warm thoughts that I hope will guide you through the end of this year, just as they have guided me and kept me company while I quickly wrote this post, sipping hot tea that nourished my heart.

Plants keep me company while I make art, as they themselves are cosmic art.@ copyright Katerina Nedelcu

Doing poetic justice to your soul means allowing yourself to be guided and becoming a lover of all that life offers for you to experience.

"Guide," an old French word that found me a few years ago, has slowly blended into my human design. Like a true midwife of ideas (as I like to call myself), becoming a self-guide or guiding others has offered me direction and opened pathways to knowledge of all kinds.
Guiding is not about direct giving but about directing—an interplay, an energy of movement, stirring you in spirals of moments and emotions. True guiding, and being guided by something or someone, means being directed with respect toward your essence.
Knowing how to express yourself is art; it becomes Art. We refer to whatever we create as Art because it is our way of moving through the world, claiming our space, our truth, and connecting with others as they share their internal world with us.

“A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.”– Eugene Ionesco

Understanding art is experiencing life. It can be uncomfortable, it can move you, stir you, displace you, rescue you, elevate you, and crush you. It allows you to walk the path of a lover of wisdom—a path of doing poetic justice to yourself when nobody else will.

‘Philos’ in philosophy means "lover of wisdom."
For me, being a lover of wisdom means living my life as a full-time lover.

“Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.” – Paul Klee

how love is created @ copyright Katerina Nedelcu

Art has the incredible power to dissolve shame and feelings of inadequacy, building, step by step, a foundation of love and acceptance.

The pull of art—the "inner voice" of conscience is a force within the psyche leading us into the unknown—push us to move into places of peace or discomfort.
It does so to help us find a place to belong in our minds, to understand, to see better.
We already belong to Nature, to the land—each one of us.
We need to know that our space exists, that our world exists, that our world needs us, and that we have something to offer.

Artworks have the capacity to transport us into other worlds. But where exactly do we go when we are immersed in art?

An old Chinese legend tells of the painter Wu Daozi (680-c760), who learned to paint so vividly that he was finally able to step inside his work and vanish into the landscape. Magical though it sounds, this legend iterates the common intuition that artworks are more like portals than ordinary objects: they can transport us into other worlds.
Where am I at this moment? What is all this surrounding me? I don’t know, I can’t say. What’s lacking? Nothing. What do I want? Nothing. If there is a God, his being must be like this, taking pleasure in himself.¹

"Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.
It will not lead you astray."
-Rumi

Art guides us through the questions, to the feeling of gratitude, joy or grief, and we create in response.

Art always gives more than it takes.
Escapism disguised as art is the other way around: it takes more than it gives. The false sense of connection sets us back; it creates loneliness in the most populated, connected era that has ever existed. As individuals living today, we feel alone and forgotten.

’A silent epidemic': Why loneliness is on the rise in a hyperconnected world.

People feel disconnected for many reasons, but one of them is not knowing they belong or how to be seen and appreciated. The need to belong in a world that disappears when the screen goes offline can be deeply unsettling.

Relying solely on external factors provides a temporary sense of connection and appreciation that exists within that space, not in the organic reality of life. It ends when our phone battery dies, leaving us outside—all of us.
When we turn inward, we begin to understand and cope with this temporary reality, recognizing its role and learning how to work with it. Yet, many of us almost never go inward, where all our resources gather to build the fire—our fire—that keeps us truly alive, not merely surviving.

And this is where art sparks: inward. We create so that we can truly connect outward, and we go outward so that we can return inward.
Do you see the alchemy in this exchange?

”The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Gratitude. 2020@ copyright Katerina Nedelcu

True art soothes us and finds us at home—in nature, in rooms filled with people, in spaces of togetherness, and in solitude—where we can breathe deeply and exchange hugs, ideas and cookies.
Art is created within us slowly, like the gradual transformation of aging, unfolding with the seasons, in silence, in being love, and in being present for others and them for us. Art, like healing, cannot thrive in isolation or in a false sense of connection made of pixels and colorful screens waiting to be “seen.”

“I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.” – Henri Matisse

We can use screens to send our creations into the world, but we must expect nothing in return.
We cannot expect to truly connect with the online world. Instead, we can use it as a tool to create more, to become more, to build independence, and to find like-minded souls. But then we must move outside, into the real world, to make life fully possible.

If we linger too long in the labyrinth of infinite digital paths, we risk losing ourselves in the endless search for meaning, draining our energy instead of replenishing it.
The outside world and the inner world must come together, not exist separately.

"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him." – John F. Kennedy

Art gives; it has no boundaries. We, in exchange, must refill ourselves organically. It requires our eyes to meet, our hands to touch, and our feet to walk. It moves us so that we can be transformed—the wind, the earth, the kisses, the warmth, the plants—all the elements that ground us in the moment of creation.

Plants keep me company while I make art, as they themselves are truth-sayers.@ copyright Katerina Nedelcu

Art makes us lovers, truth-sayers, and truth-seekers, allowing us to feel the tears and laughter, the grief and joy, the sadness and love, the anger and flame, the passion and life flowing through our bodies.
Blood is color, our bones are structure, our organs are filled with life, and every cell in us is on our side. It wants us to belong, to work, to survive, to be well, to rest, to be love, and to help us live.
Our minds are the ones that need to see what our bodies guide us to feel, to see, and to create.

Every cell fights for us, believes in us.
We carry the legacy of a long chain of people, of stories, of possibilities and potential.
We are a co-product of the universe, a child of Mother Nature, just like all the planets, galaxies, and stars we gaze upon. We are made from the same organic elements.
Never think of yourself as less than a work of cosmic art.

”The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”– Pablo Picasso

Zoom into yourself to see how many invisible stories had to be lived so that you could be here and now.
Making art of your life also means being kind to others, for they carry invisible labor, pain, and grief. Art cannot be created in hate, disgust, or exclusion.

Create, and you make visible the gifts you hold, the truth of yourself, exposing who you are in a way that helps others claim their own art and follow their own vision.
Shared art creates a ripple effect of inclusion.

“All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.”
– Federico Fellini

I belong to the land grounding-winter edition.@ copyright Katerina Nedelcu

Until next time, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite poems that I wrote this year—a year that has been so special to me in countless ways. For the first time as an adult, I returned to poetry. I’ve always carried my mother’s love for poems in my heart, and I was afraid of what I would feel if I started writing poetry.
But this is the gift of art—it gives you the courage to feel pain, remember, honor, and share.

Now it’s my turn to give back what her art made me feel and to see life over and over again, just like a snake shedding its skin to grow a new, shiny one.
I am glowing as I write words that take up space and have a life of their own.
I wish for you to glow as well, because art holds the power to bring light to our faces!

Planets of our distant Souls

Father Sun and mother Moon
Give us air, waves and earth to rule
We in return look with distant eyes,
Reduce those orbs to rocks and skies-
To objects just circling far away,
They are no longer in our cosmic pray.

Dissociated from our skin,
We did forget the world within.
Planets once mirrored what we've still seek,
But now they’re distant, silent, bleak.

If we look up we might just see
That beam of light we crave to feel-
That in our cold bones we know we’ve missed
In all the atoms and stars, it’s been
A distant parts of us, a home to be,
Just look again with joyful eyes
You’ll find the soul that never dies.

@ copyright Katerina Nedelcu

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Thank you—whoever you are.
Ripples always travel farther than we know… or sometimes, they bring things closer.
I'm here to write and share. You’re welcome to read with no expectations.

1. https://psyche.co/ideas/when-art-transports-us-where-do-we-actually-go